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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to think woman's spread legs on gates in Festival Park Glasgow is disturbing?

211 replies

FindTheTruth · 16/08/2021 06:27

AIBU to think that installing a woman's spread legs on gates in Festival Park Glasgow is disturbing? "the gate of Assumption"

Presumably approved by Glasgow City Council. Someone on twitter says they've done a Freedom of Information request
twitter.com/lorcaat/status/1426981748894797831

Ltd Ink Corporations ‘Gateway to Govan-The Safari of Sorts, Is a series of £100 micro commissions, focused on site specific contemporary artworks. Extending beyond the parameters of our Govan headquarters, this interactive art-safari begins on the facade of our warehouse and extends to the revitalised Clyde waterfront. The walk features works by a collection of artists
ltdinkcorporation.com/Gateway-to-Govan-The-Safari-of-Sorts

AIBU to think woman's spread legs on gates in Festival Park Glasgow is disturbing?
AIBU to think woman's spread legs on gates in Festival Park Glasgow is disturbing?
OP posts:
midgemagneto · 16/08/2021 13:18

@SpindleWhorl

The Govan councillors helped to get it removed. Good for them, and the other councillors.
Thanks for this info
mustlovegin · 16/08/2021 13:18

Excellent news that it's gone!

Great news! Can we have our £100 back?

1forAll74 · 16/08/2021 13:19

Grim and tacky to say the least, I would imagine it's been photographed a lot, with many people making lewd comments outside the gates.

littlbrowndog · 16/08/2021 13:19

Been removed

AIBU to think woman's spread legs on gates in Festival Park Glasgow is disturbing?
seasonalremarks · 16/08/2021 13:20

horrible attac in that park as I did research on the area especially looking at safety for women. As parks and green areas in a city are in general not safe place for women. Especially after dark (currently working on a project that comments on sexual harrasment in parks and public space) as a feminist I was aware of that it might be interpretet as sexist.... but at the same time it is trying to point out that we should not assume anything, not by how people are dressed, shirt skirts or high heels... the work is two legs in high heels, are they female? I feel the work touches upon the discourse on victim blaming in sexual harassment as well as giving the park area a feminine vibe that these green areas need. As for now parks, in iceland, glasgow or any other city are not safe for everybody.
"

That's a really offensive drivel of excuses.

What on earth are you talking about? Do you make decisions on important issues in Glasgow!

candycane222 · 16/08/2021 13:21

Just read the Daily Herald article linked in that tweet from @ItsAllGoingToBeFine - it quotes the artist from before any decision was made about removing them.
If anyone can make any sense of her justification, I'm impressed. Artists seem to live in a world of their own Confused

"Parks and green areas in a city are in general not safe place for women, specially after dark.

"I am currently working on a project that comments on sexual harassment in parks and public space.

"As a feminist I was aware of that it might be interpreted as sexist... but at the same time it is trying to point out that we should not assume anything?"

"Not by how people are dressed, shirt skirts or high heels....the work is two legs in high heels, are they female?

"I feel the work touches upon the discourse on victim blaming in sexual harassment as well as giving the park area a feminine vibe that these green areas need."

You what now??? What a load of old gobbledegook (and perhaps I'm being too kind there)

candycane222 · 16/08/2021 13:22

Ha, snap, seasonal!

SpindleWhorl · 16/08/2021 13:22

These might be councillors with whom it's worth raising other issues re misogyny? Sometimes it takes a 'perfect storm' with rain dumping on their own doorstep for councillors and other politicians to 'get it'.

Whoopsmahoot · 16/08/2021 13:26

Agreed, poor taste

WhoNeedsaManOfTheWorld · 16/08/2021 13:35

Has the artist lifted her reasoning from her gender studies courseHmm

NiceGerbil · 16/08/2021 13:36

Maybe it was just a basic warning to women and girls

In this park women and girls are seen as a hole for a cock. Therefore if you are not selling sex please be advised you will be seen by men as a hole for their cock. If you are selling sex the council hold no responsibility for your safety.

Or something? It's a very direct way of getting that message across in as universal a way as possible I suppose

AfternoonToffee · 16/08/2021 13:44

@Snugglepumpkin

I find that really repulsive. Apart from being straight out tacky, by installing it where they have it's seems you are ripping the woman in half every time you open those gates.

Just down the road from me near a supermarket I sometimes use, a man who hated women shot a few people the other day.

He did this in the city that installed a 7 metre high statue of a spread legged prostitute outside the theatre (admittedly not spread the same way but they made a big deal about her being a fictional prostitute).
You can walk through her legs to get to the theatre if you want.
That's the message Plymouth sent to women haters.
It was obviously received loud & clear.

Nancy Astor (also Plymouth) got a much smaller statue because being the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons is obviously less of a big deal than being a prostitute close to the spot which was known for decades before the installation to be one of the most sleazy parts of the city.
Of course, Nancy Astor was a passionate feminist & that's not the message misogynists want to send out.

I've heard all the bullshit 'arty' reasons why that's not supposed to be the message but it's the only one I hear kids taking away from it.
The squatting prostitute statue is the cultural symbol of the city where incels are permitted guns by the police & shoot women because they don't get the sex they think they are entitled to.

Some man probably thought it was funny to open a womans legs to get to what you want with no thought for the damage you'd do to a woman if you actually tried to do it in real life.
Yet again, that's hate or deep contempt, not art.

I fully agree, I posted elsewhere about society as a whole needing to make changes to deal with the likes of the situation in Plymouth, I was pretty much waved away, but we normalise things like these gates, or the art at the theatre and it all contributes. The shooter didn't just wake up Friday morning and decide to do this, all these messages have been going in for years and years.
Feelingoktoday · 16/08/2021 13:46

Thank god it’s been removed. Truly offensive. I was waiting for men to start posting pictures of themselves with it. Derogatory

334bu · 16/08/2021 14:27

Festival Park is in in the middle of a unionist area (so the less nice parts of Glasgow) and known to be mostly inhabited by drug dealers and sex workers. I am not too far away from it and the gates fit in with the feeling of the park - they may well have been intended as a positive comment on the sex workers in the park. Not everyone's taste but not the end of the world.

This area of Glasgow is now very much a culturally diverse community with many people from all ethnicities. If the aim of this installation was to comment positively on the presence of prostitutes, pimps and their clients in this park it is a real slap in the face to the hard working people who live around it.
However, as a warning to all women and girls in the community to stay out of the park or else, then it will have succeeded.
In this week where in Afghanistan women are being forced back into their homes and stripped of all their rights to go about freely in society, it is truly frightening that someone, somewhere in Glasgow ,thought this so called art installation was appropriate. Our society is truly institutionally misogynistic.

youdoyoutoday · 16/08/2021 14:48

It's really grim!!

NiceGerbil · 16/08/2021 14:51

I find the artist's idea that 'challenging' stereotypes by saying flat shoes high heels OHO think about why they are associated with woman/man, a challenge that I thought was done and dusted in the 70s tbh.

And if she thinks the average person seeing that, with the hole in the middle on the gate, will think gosh my preconceptions are really blindsided by this! Of course it would well be a man's legs heels and arsehole... Then she's hopelessly naive at best.

NiceGerbil · 16/08/2021 14:56

Feminine vibe =
High heels and spread legs, hole

Thanks for that clever artist!

Somanysocks · 16/08/2021 14:57

Seriously, how have you made this into a racial issue? Or maybe, why have you made this into a racial issue?!

Can you imagine the fallout if they had been brown/black legs?

MaryBellingham11432 · 16/08/2021 14:57

@Hilarias

Misogynist and poorly painted.
The artists is a female called Rakel McMahon.
334bu · 16/08/2021 15:01

The artists is a female called Rakel McMahon.

Just because you are a woman doesn't mean that you can't be a misogynist.

SpindleWhorl · 16/08/2021 15:16

I can give you a long list of massively misogynistic women, many of whom are, unfortunately, in Scotland.

wednesdayweather · 16/08/2021 16:21

I feel like progression made for women in society is rapidly being eroded and stuff like this is just completely depressing. Society was far from perfect in the 1990’s but it seemed better at that point.

Women were getting more rights. I was involved with writing equal opportunities policies back in 1989, then equal pay for work of equal value really took off and then it was made it possible for men to be charged with raping their wives which they could not even be charged with till 1992. I just hate what’s happening

I completely agree. As a young women in the 1990s I just assumed we were on a trajectory of things improving for women and girls in all areas in the UK. I really, really don't believe that anymore. Instead I think that there there is a deeper cultural misogyny than I ever imagined and that is coming through again in so many ways.

wednesdayweather · 16/08/2021 16:29

In this park women and girls are seen as a hole for a cock. Therefore if you are not selling sex please be advised you will be seen by men as a hole for their cock. If you are selling sex the council hold no responsibility for your safety
Yep, that is the message the art gave to far more people than the artist's lame defence.

wednesdayweather · 16/08/2021 16:33

the work is two legs in high heels, are they female?
Absolutely everyone who sees those legs knows they are a woman's.

I feel the work touches upon the discourse on victim blaming in sexual harassment
No-one else who sees it thinks that,. They just think it is more tireseome, dehumanising objectification of women, that feeds off and into hatred of women.

as well as giving the park area a feminine vibe that these green areas need
Only if you see women as nothing more than open, ready cunts in heels.

QueenPeary · 16/08/2021 17:28

as well as giving the park area a feminine vibe that these green areas need

It's this bit that makes me think she hasn't a clue and is waffling off the top of her head. Feminine vibe? Don't green areas have a "feminine" vibe already, if anything? Trees, flowers, regeneration, growth? I mean not that I see a park as especially masculine or feminine really, but if you're going to attempt to argue that a space is lacking a feminine vibe, wouldn't that be more appropriate to a male-dominated space like a construction site or something? It makes no sense.

And then when it turns out that by "feminine vibe" she means "porn vibe"